


visionary

by dilangley



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: If you also interpret Leo as falling madly in love with Ezio, It's not a Meet-Cute when there's this much murder, M/M, This is completely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23736700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilangley/pseuds/dilangley
Summary: Leonardo's thoughts on meeting Ezio Auditore da Firenze for the first time... and the second.
Relationships: Ezio Auditore da Firenze/Leonardo da Vinci
Comments: 5
Kudos: 66





	visionary

Leonardo believed himself a visionary. At his table in the evenings, he could imagine a world not yet in place. His mind’s eye swooped with flying machines and peered through human skin to the wonderland beneath. In the grips of his vision, his fingers were clumsy, unable to make what he knew would come. Perhaps he was a prophet, meant to merely bear witness to what would be.

He grew so accustomed to this as to become unaccustomed to surprise.

But a client came to pick up paintings and brought her son with her. A beautiful young man born to be painted and petted and pampered all the days of his life. He greeted Leonardo without seeing him, casual, dismissive, called his work marginal when he thought the artist out of earshot.

Ezio Auditore, already scarred across his full lips before life ever brought him to his battles, was what Leonardo never saw coming.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


In the time after the hangings of his brothers and father, Ezio disappeared from Florence but appeared at Leonardo’s doorstep. Though his eyes were haunted, his voice was clear, kind even. They were strangers, really, barely acquainted at all. 

“I didn’t expect to see you again, what with all that’s happened,” Leonardo said. Ezio’s face hardened. In that split second, Leonardo made the decision: they were to be friends. He hugged the young man tight. “Where are my manners? Welcome back.”

They forged something at that moment that neither of them would ever fully understand. They were so different: the graceful artist who released the caged birds from the market mended the blade of a would-be assassin. 

But even then, Leonardo marveled at what his studio could create. Not a weapon or an answer to long-lost codes. No, he knew his own capabilities too well to be falsely modest. He marveled at the kind of peace in his studio that Ezio could fall asleep there without fear. 

To be certain, he slept upright in his chair like a man hunted by his enemies, but sleep he did without fits or starts. His face smoothed into serene peace.

He tinkered with the blade long after he was finished just to let his new friend rest.

Later, when he killed a man with the hidden blade and deposited the body in Leonardo’s workshop, Ezio looked at him for a long, slow moment.

“Thank you, Leonardo. For everything.”

Leonardo worked at his drawing table like a man possessed that night. He tried to transfer the regality of Ezio’s bearing to the page and then to the canvas. Showing the transformation of pain into purpose on a single handsome face proved impossible, though he tried off and on for years to come.

**Author's Note:**

> There is no excuse for posting this. It's 500 words. That's not enough. But I'm not going to write any more of it, and I needed to clear the pipes by posting it because damn it, I liked it.
> 
> Sorry, bros. This is what happens when I enter a fandom a million years too late.


End file.
